The Caryatids

“I sure know what kind of hell we’d catch if we shut down Toddy’s re­tirement show.”

“We can reschedule her retirement. Nobody reschedules an earth­quake.”

“Oh, just come off all that, Glyn.”

“You come off it,” said Glyn. “We built this place on a fault line! If this building topples over, it’ll crush us all like bugs!”

This flat threat gave Radmila a serious pause. How could Glyn fail to trust the ubiquitous programming of the Los Angeles County Furniture Showroom?

“Put me on, Glyn. This building is totally modern.”

“It is not ‘modern,’ “ said Glyn, “it is ‘state-of-the-art.’ There’s a big difference.”

“What do you want from me? Toddy is on! Put me on, too!”

“Two minutes,” Glyn agreed, but in the Showroom crawlspace, the normal chaos of tech support had a sudden hysterical edge.

The Family’s security people always lurked backstage, wearing their masked black Kabuki costumes, and frankly doing nothing much, usually. Most of the Family’s black-clad stage ninjas weren’t even real Se­curity. They were Family members whose faces were painfully famous, so they were happily invisible in masks.

A ninja reached out his sinister black-gloved hand and gently patted her costumed shoulder. “Break a leg,” he murmured. The ninja was Li­onel, her brother-in-law. Lionel was all of seventeen, and whenever his big brother John was gone on business, Lionel was always making gal­lant little gestures of support for her. He was a sweet kid, Lionel.

Toddy was babbling, and the soundtrack noodled through a gentle. repertoire of medleys. Radmila listened keenly for her cue. Her cue was overdue.

The reactive DJ system drew its repertoire from audience behavior, and Toddy’s core fans, her favorite shareholders, were getting anxious. Through any of a thousand possible channels, the tremor alert had jabbed them awake. These fine, dignified old people were not in a panic just yet, but knew they might soon have a good excuse.

Their interactive music had the air of tragedy.

Radmila finally went on. Her hair was okay, the face was more than okay, the costume would do, but her stage hat felt like a big live lobster. As a tribute, she was wearing one of Toddy’s signature stage hats, a huge­- brimmed feathered apparatus that framed a star’s face like a saintly halo, but the old-school hat hadn’t synced completely to the costume, and the awkward thing, appallingly, felt heavy. It should have wafted through the stage-lit air like a parasail. It felt like a bag of wet cement.

Toddy rose from her couch, ignoring Mila’s entrance. It was unheard­of for Toddy Montgomery to miss a cue. Radmila was shocked. She man­aged the first half-dozen steps of her planned routine and then simply walked over.

Toddy turned to her: beneath her huge hat was the tremulous face of a scared old woman. “Thank you for joining us at this difficult time, Mila.”

This was not in the script. So, improvisational theater: Never, ever look surprised. Keep the stage biz flowing; always say “YES, AND.”

“Yes, of course I came here to be with you, Toddy,” Radmila ad-libbed. “Wherever else would I go?”

“We’re evacuating all the children first.”

’’Yes, of course. The children come first. That’s exactly how it should be.”

“The seismic wave is in Catalina. This one is a Big One.”

“Surfs up,” Radmila quipped. There was one moment of anguished silence from the murmuring audience, then a roar of applause.

Radmila sat and smiled serenely. She crossed her legs beneath her gleaming skirt. “I suppose we women will be leaving, too—once they get around to us.”

“I never like to leave a party,” said Toddy. She fought with her badly confused costume, and managed to sit.

An antique sandalwood trolley rolled over with a delicate chime of brass bells.

“Tea?” said Toddy.

Alarm sirens howled. The’ sirens of Los Angeles were terrifying. A scared coyote the size of a ten-story building might have howled like LA’s monster cybernetic sirens. The sirens had been planted all across the city, with intense geolocative care. There were networked packs of them.

Toddy turned her stiff, aged face to the sky. A twirling, linking set of geodesics, thin beams looking delicate as toothpicks, danced across the stars. Los Angeles was famous for the clarity of its skies. “It’s been such a lovely night, too.”

“You’ve never looked prettier,” Radmila lied, and then the earth­quake shock hit the building. The antique couch below them bounded straight into the air.

The entire studio audience went visibly airborne, their arms sponta­neously flopping over their heads like victims in a broken elevator.

The museum floor dipped from rim to rim like a juggler’s airborne plate. It rose up swiftly under the audience.

The floor gently caught thern as they fell.

The silence was cut by startled screams.

Radmila scrambled across the couch and groped for Toddy. The old woman had swooned away, her mouth open, eyes blank. There seemed to be no flesh within her massive, glittering costume. Toddy was a pretty, beaded bag of bones.

A second shock hit the museum. This shock was much bigger than the first, an endless, churning, awesome, geological catastrophe. The museum reacted with a roller coaster’s oily grace and speed, ducking and banking. They were suspended in limbo, an epoch of reeling and twisting, rubbery groans and shrieks for mercy.

Radmila found herself audibly counting the seconds.

The earthquake rushed past them, in its blind, dumb, obliterative fashion.

The sirens ceased to wail. People were gasping and shrieking. Rad­mila twisted in her stubborn costume to look at Toddy. Toddy was un­conscious. Toddy Montgomery had a very famous face, an epic, iconic face, and that face had never looked so bad.

Radmila clambered to her feet. The panicked audience was strug­gling in semidarkness, while she had the stage lights. The audience badly needed her now, and a star on stage could outshout anybody.

Radmila tore the dented hat from her face. “Did you see what this building just did for us? That was completely amazing!”

Radmila dropped the hat and clapped her hands. The stunned audi­ence caught on. They heartily applauded their own survival.

“The architect’s name is Frank Osbourne,” Radmila told them. “He lives and he works in Los Angeles!”

Those who could stand rose to applaud.

The museum floor beneath their feet was miraculously stable now. Their building was as firm as granite, as if earthquakes were some kind of myth.

Toddy was entirely still.

The sirens began again, different noises: fire alarms. The fire warn­ings had a gentler, less agitated sound design. Los Angeles fires were much commoner than earthquakes.

With tender respect, members of the audience began setting the prized furniture straight. They sat with conspicuous dignity, and simply gazed up at Radmila. They still wanted to be entertained.

A black-clad shadow vaulted from backstage, did a showy, spectacu­lar front flip.

Lionel had made an entrance.

Lionel had thoughtfully brought her some scripting. The two of them hastily conferred. Lionel leaned his black-wrapped head against hers to whisper. “Grandma’s had a power failure.”

“I know that.”

“I’ll get her offstage, you manage this crowd.”

Radmila commanded the audience. “Ladies and gentlemen, all the elevators in this structure are working beautifully. So we will have you out of here very quickly. Your limos are coming. We’ll evacuate anyone who is injured. So people, please look to your neighbors now, send out reports, send a prompt… The city’s comprehensive